rwth-aachen.de · Domains · Slashdot Mirror

Mirrors, with release 1.4 and 2.0 by RealAlaskan · 2004-12-10 06:18 · Score: 3, Informative · on TheOpenCD 2.0 Released

Version 1.4:

Re:Awesome by stew77 · 2004-11-20 13:33 · Score: 1 · on New Atomic Clock 1000 Times More Accurate

Well, at least they are very precise in download size estimates - Nanobytes!

Java iButton PAM kit URL by WillerZ · 2004-11-16 02:00 · Score: 1 · on Bill Gates Proclaims End of Passwords

There used to be a PAM module to use the Java iButton on Linux here:

http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/dierk.bolten/pam_i button.html

but it's 404 now, and I can't find a live mirror.

Anyone got it?

Phil

Re:Comparison with Myrinet by stef716 · 2004-10-15 14:25 · Score: 5, Informative · on InfiniBand Drivers Released for Xserve G5 Clusters

Hi,

where did you get these numbers?
If you really want to compare the latency of actual interconnects you should use the official performance results achieved in real environments using the driver api:
(values from homepages)

1. SCI (dolphinIcs) : 1.4 us
2. Quadrics: 1.7 us
3. Infiniband 4.5 us
4. Myrinet 6.3 us

MPI latency and bandwidth highly depend on the mpi library. I suggest to compare the mpich results.
I rated these interconnects. But I'm sorry, I only have a german version.

http://stef.tvk.rwth-aachen.de/research/interconne cts_docu.pdf

Re:Screenshots by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-08 06:16 · Score: 0 · on Debian Installer RC1 Is Out

Screenshots to the GTK+ frontend here.

Not great (reminds me of the Tk-based pre-2.6 "make xconfig"), but a work in progress.

Re:Mac Firmware by Graff · 2004-06-17 10:37 · Score: 2, Informative · on More Power To The Firmware

I suppose it's possible since you can update the firmware, but does Apple keep information about how to program the firmware proprietary, or is it open for people to tinker with?

Apple provides plenty of information and links to information on the Apple Open Firmware Home Page. They even have a good sense of humor. The machine that the site is running on is located at "bananajr6000.apple.com"!

Re:The merits of pHDs by Der+Krazy+Kraut · 2004-06-11 21:51 · Score: 5, Informative · on Physicist Loses Degree for Data Falsification

In Germany, some universities can even revoke your PhD if you've commited a felony (unrelated to your PhD or any misuse of knowledge) and were sentenced to imprisonment of 1 year or longer. I always thought that was kind of bizarre.

For example, the RWTH Aachen does this. Here's the relevant text (Promotionsordnung der RWTH, see 19, "Verlust des Doktorgrades") Sorry, German only.

KGB is watching you! by reignbow · 2004-03-23 19:05 · Score: 1 · on What's Your Browser Start Page?

Mine is a semi-local page. I live in a university dorm of sorts, and every one of the about 400 computers this site of our central switch can be considered semi-local: Connection speeds of 95 MBit/s, for real. Now, there happens to exist a traffic limit: We are only allowed 3 Gigs of internet traffic per month. The bean counter that ensures this is an old K6 called "KGB". It also shows off some nifty stats how traffic has developed over the last day, week, month, year. As such, its an important page which can contain some curious information as well, and which loads instantly. The latter is what keeps me from using www.google.de, as that usually takes 1s or so.

Contrib Packages for 3.2 by hashinclude · 2004-02-03 04:44 · Score: 1 · on KDE 3.2.0 Released

Since nobody has (yet) taken the pains of posting the mirror list (yea, yea, I know, this is /.) -- here it is:

Hmm .. I wonder if the /. lameness filter was designed so that people couldn't post whole mirror lists themselves. Telling me that I don't have enough characters per line. I think I'll just ask the KDE people to create a static fast-serving no-css page full of mirrors for KDE whenever a release happens. That way, at least some amount of trouble would be saved. Goes off to mail KDE team ...

(pulled from KDE Mirror List)

WARNING: VERY BAD FORMATTING to get around the lame lameness filter.

mirrors.isc.org. . .ibiblio.org. . .ibiblio.org. . .ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu. . .ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu. . .
mirrors.midco.net. . .mirrors.midco.net. . .ftp.oregonstate.edu. . .kde.oregonstate.edu. . .download.uk.kde.org. . .
download.at.kde.org. . .download.at.kde.org. . .ftp.eu.uu.net. . .ftp.tiscali.nl. . .ftp.du.se. . .
ftp.solnet.ch. . .ftp.rutgers.edu. . .ftp.rutgers.edu. . .kde.uk.themoes.org. . .kde.us.themoes.org. . .
ftp.de.kde.org. . .ftp.de.kde.org. . .ftp.gwdg.de. . .ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de. . .ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de. . .
ftp.uni-kl.de. . .download.au.kde.org. . .ftp.roedu.net. . .ftp.fi.muni.cz. . .ftp.fu-berlin.de. . .
ftp.tu-chemnitz.de. . .sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de. . .filepile.tiscali.de. . .ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl. . .ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl. . .
sunsite.icm.edu.pl. . .sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch. . .ftp.se.kde.org. .

And the rest of you, use these mirros: by danalien · 2004-02-03 01:42 · Score: 3, Informative · on KDE 3.2.0 Released

ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/ kde/stable/3.2/src/
ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/ftp.kd e.org/pub/kde/stable/3.2/src/
ftp://ftp.rhnet.is/pub/kde/stable/3.2/src

They are at least up and fast...

The point? by reignbow · 2004-01-17 02:23 · Score: 1 · on Student Fights University Over Plagiarism-Detector

Hmmm. I can't really see the point of this anti-cheating thing; seems to me it creates a lot more troubles than it removes.

Using anti-cheating website:

Blatant mistrust. Students get offended, and rightly so
Has problems with people working on exercises in a group
Needs failsafe, or rather possibility of appeal

Not using it:

A few people will try to cheat
People will learn to incorporate data from various sources when the people they study and work with are considered proper sources (i.e. concept of cheating changes and becomes less of a problem)
No technical difficulties: "Sorry, Professor, we couldn't hand in the assignment. The website got slashdotted"

I rather like the way it's handled at my university, where the exercises during the term are not checked for copying at all, and group work, as well as research in the library or online are fully permitted. The reasons: These are necessary skills to survive as a scientist or engineer. What's more, passing the exercises gives you permission to participate in the end-of-term exam. No more. These exams are extremely difficult to cheat in (not least because you need a lot of information, and most methods of cheating have a low data density). Anyone who hasn't acted responsibly and learnt their stuff, perishes cruelly *startEvilLaughter();* Of course, if you're caught cheating, you get a zero on the exam, meaning you wasted half a year (and that's a big chunk of your life).

The same idea for images by TomDes · 2004-01-05 08:28 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Better Search Results Than Google?

We realized the same idea for images. Take the results from Google Image Search and rearrange them using methods from computer vision.
An article about this is available here: Clustering visually similar images to improve image search engines .

Obligatory link by michaelmalak · 2003-12-30 06:22 · Score: 4, Funny · on iPod Jr. Rumors Become More Substantial

Banana Jr. 2000

Re:question by The+One+KEA · 2003-12-29 04:49 · Score: 2, Informative · on UK Approves of 5.8GHz For Rural Broadband

It depends on the signal encoding and protocols transmitted on that band. In this case, 5.8GHz is an additional signal band being added to the group of signal bands utilized by the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g standards. The encoding used by those standards (Orthogonal Frequency Divison Multiplexing, link) allows for a maximum clean-room EM-free speed of 54Mbps. In reality, once you factor in interference, equipment quality and distance, you can only really reach approxmiately 20Mbps, which will still outstrip most consumer-level broadband options.

IANASS.

Mirrors by DeadSea · 2003-11-20 11:14 · Score: 1, Redundant · on A Monocultural Alternative: TheOpenCD

From World Wide Web://theopencd.sunsite.dk/mirrors.php

Please use one of the mirror sites below to download your copy of TheOpenCD (note: not all have v1.2 updates). The ISO and source tar are also available on BitTorrent. For more info on Bittorrent, click here, or click here for a BitTorrent client.

Australia World Wide Web | FTP | Mirror courtesy of Jason Andrade and PlanetMirror.

Austria World Wide Web | FTP | Rsync | Mirror courtesy of Antonin Sprinzl and the Vienna University of Technology.

Belgium World Wide Web | FTP | Mirror courtesy of Cedric Gavage and Skynet Belgacom.

Brazil World Wide Web | Mirror courtesy of Aleck Zander and Universidade Estadual Paulista.

Canada FTP | Mirror courtesy of Thomas Cort and Bishop's University.

Finland FTP | Mirror courtesy of Harri Salminen and Funet.

Germany 1 World Wide Web | FTP | Rsync | Mirror courtesy of Daniel Lang and Informatik der Technischen Universitt Mnchen.

Germany 2 FTP | Mirror courtesy of Tom Rueger and the Universitt Bayreuth.

Germany 3 FTP | Mirror courtesy of Thomas List and SunSite Aachen.

Germany 4 FTP | Mirror courtesy of Holger Weiss and Freie Universitt Berlin.

UK World Wide Web | FTP | Mirror courtesy of Yang He and UK Mirror Service.

USA 1 World Wide Web | FTP | Mirror courtesy of A. J. Wright and the The University of Tennessee.

USA 2 World Wide Web | FTP | Rsync | Mirror courtesy of Sam Chessman and Tux.org

USA 3 World Wide Web | FTP | Rsync | Mirror courtesy of Jason Holmes and the Pennsylvania State University.

USA 4 World Wide

Re:Steel is Real! by randyest · 2003-07-26 08:25 · Score: 1 · on Bamboo Bike A Reality

You're the second poster who has used the adjective plush to describe the feel of a steel bike frame ride. I don't get this. Can you explain how a bike's ride can be plush without, say, ensconcing the rider in a velvet recliner or somthing? I've never seen a bike with a velvet recliner attached (though I'd very much like to).

I've ridden steel, aluminum, and titanium frame bikes, and would not describe any of those experiences as plush. Nor could I even really differentiate them much, other than by their weight (and cost, of course). And I do ride hard, in various terrain, sometimes fast, sometimes touring, never plush. Where and how should I ride to be able to notice plushness or the lack thereof?

According to this site, all of these statements are false:

Aluminum frames have a harsh ride
Titanium frames are soft and whippy
Steel frames go soft with age, but they have a nicer ride quality
England's Queen Elizabeth is a kingpin of the international drug trade

Of course, we know the last one is really true, but the point on bike frames is that the material does not affect the strength and stiffness as much as the quality of the tubing used. I think the same applies to bamboo, BTW, since accroding to this (and to a lesser degree this), properly selected bamboo tubes can be as stong or stronger than steel titanium, aluminum, and even carbon fiber. And that's not just tensile strength as the article mentions, but shear, yeild, and modulus as well.

Pretty amazing stuff, that bamboo. Did you know that it can grow more than 2.5 inches per day? How about 8 inches per day!?

Re:Theory of Computation -- Theory of Exposure to by mvw · 2003-06-25 03:30 · Score: 1 · on Mastering Regular Expressions

Although it is agreed that CFG's, regular expressions, FSM and compiler technologies are important, I'd wager that well under 1% of the online community -- and even under 5% of the 'technical' community every really had to wade through the proof that an NFA called N is equivalent to a DFA called D subject to the following blah blah blah. :-)

These regex books are nice to get a first grip on the topic, to see some common applications beyond del *.*.

But I personally came only past a certain level of understanding, these texts never managed to explain what NEAs are, why there are sometimes epsilon transitions or not and so on.

The big enlightening came after a great course in automata theory and formal languages (in German), thus some theoretical computer science.

After this course it was considerably easier to read the dragon book and such applied regexp titles. So I would definitely recommend to read through a book like Hopcroft/Ullmann to get the foundations right.

This year I work through a course about applied automata theory (in German) and it introduces great applications, the connection between finite automata and logic formulae, which is important for model checking and automata that do not work on words but on trees or even more complicated structures like pictures and grids. The tree automata allowed to me get a better grip about the foundations of XML, DTDs, XPATH and such.

Last year there was a course about automata theory and reactive systems (in English). which used automata on infinite words to model parallel processes, games and such. Too bad I had no time to work throught it.

So I definitely vote to go for the theoretical computer science. It makes you see certain design decisions much, much clearer.

Regards,
Marc

Re:Theory of Computation -- Theory of Exposure to by mvw · 2003-06-25 03:30 · Score: 1 · on Mastering Regular Expressions

Although it is agreed that CFG's, regular expressions, FSM and compiler technologies are important, I'd wager that well under 1% of the online community -- and even under 5% of the 'technical' community every really had to wade through the proof that an NFA called N is equivalent to a DFA called D subject to the following blah blah blah. :-)

These regex books are nice to get a first grip on the topic, to see some common applications beyond del *.*.

But I personally came only past a certain level of understanding, these texts never managed to explain what NEAs are, why there are sometimes epsilon transitions or not and so on.

The big enlightening came after a great course in automata theory and formal languages (in German), thus some theoretical computer science.

After this course it was considerably easier to read the dragon book and such applied regexp titles. So I would definitely recommend to read through a book like Hopcroft/Ullmann to get the foundations right.

This year I work through a course about applied automata theory (in German) and it introduces great applications, the connection between finite automata and logic formulae, which is important for model checking and automata that do not work on words but on trees or even more complicated structures like pictures and grids. The tree automata allowed to me get a better grip about the foundations of XML, DTDs, XPATH and such.

Last year there was a course about automata theory and reactive systems (in English). which used automata on infinite words to model parallel processes, games and such. Too bad I had no time to work throught it.

So I definitely vote to go for the theoretical computer science. It makes you see certain design decisions much, much clearer.

Regards,
Marc

Re:Theory of Computation -- Theory of Exposure to by mvw · 2003-06-25 03:30 · Score: 1 · on Mastering Regular Expressions

Although it is agreed that CFG's, regular expressions, FSM and compiler technologies are important, I'd wager that well under 1% of the online community -- and even under 5% of the 'technical' community every really had to wade through the proof that an NFA called N is equivalent to a DFA called D subject to the following blah blah blah. :-)

These regex books are nice to get a first grip on the topic, to see some common applications beyond del *.*.

But I personally came only past a certain level of understanding, these texts never managed to explain what NEAs are, why there are sometimes epsilon transitions or not and so on.

The big enlightening came after a great course in automata theory and formal languages (in German), thus some theoretical computer science.

After this course it was considerably easier to read the dragon book and such applied regexp titles. So I would definitely recommend to read through a book like Hopcroft/Ullmann to get the foundations right.

This year I work through a course about applied automata theory (in German) and it introduces great applications, the connection between finite automata and logic formulae, which is important for model checking and automata that do not work on words but on trees or even more complicated structures like pictures and grids. The tree automata allowed to me get a better grip about the foundations of XML, DTDs, XPATH and such.

Last year there was a course about automata theory and reactive systems (in English). which used automata on infinite words to model parallel processes, games and such. Too bad I had no time to work throught it.

So I definitely vote to go for the theoretical computer science. It makes you see certain design decisions much, much clearer.

Regards,
Marc

Re:"Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing" by tdvaughan · 2003-06-11 06:31 · Score: 1 · on Is 3G Irrelevant?

A spot of Googlage turned up this. Didn't make it any clearer to me, though.

I blame Taco for that! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-05 03:12 · Score: 0 · on Is The Software Industry Dead?

Slashdot ate my linkie! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Re:Prior art ;-) by redhat421 · 2003-04-27 09:29 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Remote Direct Memory Access Over IP

Linux will not swap over NFS without a patch which you can find Here. I use this for diskless workstations, and it works well.... I'm not sure if your application will be faster or not with this.

Re:You Buy A Machine... by nbvb · 2003-04-15 02:53 · Score: 4, Funny · on PS2 Getting DVD Upgrade & Progressive Video?

If you bought your wife a PS/2 for Christmas this year, I'd bet you're STILL sleeping on the couch.

Seriously. Even the most
advanced PS/2 Models only had a Pentium-60 chip.

Next time, don't be such a cheapskate. At least get one of those Lintendo systems from Walmart....

~NBVB

Re:OS Specific Hardware! by rpresser · 2003-03-17 13:14 · Score: 1 · on Antisocial Hardware?

We have an aging Intervoice IVR system running on an original IBM PS/2 model 95 - still running OS/2. (Extremely stable, I might add; the only reason we upgraded from OS/2 2.1 to OS/2 Warp 3 was because of Y2K. Less than an hour downtime in the last six months. On hardware from the early 90s.) Not only are the telephone line cards inside it MCA, therefore OS/2 specific; there is an expansion box that supports additional line cards, connected to the PS/2 by an MCA card.

(Okay, you can probably run Linux or BSD on a PS/2. But I seriously doubt you can find drivers for these cards.)

Fixed in ANSI 96 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-06 05:53 · Score: 0 · on Mike and Phani's Essential C++ Techniques

Basic.Scope.

4 Names declared in the for-init-statement, and in the condition of if,
while, for, and switch statements are local to the if, while, for, or
switch statement (including the controlled statement), and shall not
be redeclared in a subsequent condition of that statement nor in the
outermost block (or, for the if statement, any of the outermost
blocks) of the controlled statement; see _stmt.select_."

earlier ANSI definitions didn't include the
"(including the controlled statement)" bit.

Comparisons of Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, etc. by Pingster · 2003-01-05 12:15 · Score: 2, Informative · on Mathematica vs. Matlab?

Lots of people have talked about this question before. Here are some pointers I found that might be helpful...

thread on the Maple Users Group list entitled "Maple vs. Mathematica"
comparison of various operations in various computer algebra systems
another comparison of various operations in Maple, Matlab, Mathematica, IDL (doesn't look complete, but it offers some discussion)
some discussion of differences in the programming models between Maple and Mathematica

I'm sure there's a lot more; try some Google searches: maple mathematica matlab, maple vs mathematica, "computer algebra" comparison.

A Fruity PC by Dannon · 2002-11-01 01:19 · Score: 2, Funny · on PumpkinPC v1.0 Makes Its Hallowe'en Debut

Did anyone else see this story about a pumpkin computer and immediately think of the Banana Junior 2000?

A reminder to parents: by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-16 05:18 · Score: 0 · on IBM PowerPC 970 Architecture

Gene Simmons never had a personal computer when he was a kid!

This public service announcement brought to by by Bannana Computer.

Re:Mac's are walking now?? by Stonehand · 2002-08-22 05:55 · Score: 2 · on Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" Reviews Pour In

Hm, the Banana Jr. has finally come to life.

mirrors by dotgod · 2002-07-23 05:35 · Score: 3, Informative · on Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 1

Australia

ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brisbane)
Austria

ftp://ftp.univie.ac.at/systems/linux/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Vienna)

ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Vienna)
Belgium

ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Costa Rica

ftp://ftp.ucr.ac.cr/pub/Unix/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/
Czech Republic

ftp://ftp.cesnet.cz/OS/Linux/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2 /i586/ (Brno)

ftp://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)

ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linux/Dist/Mandrake/m andrake/8.2/i586/ (Prague)

http://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Brno)
Denmark

ftp://ftp.dkuug.dk/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Koebenhavn)

ftp://ftp.sunsite.dk/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aalborg)
Estonia

ftp://ftp.aso.ee/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandra ke/8.2/i586/
Finland

ftp://ftp.song.fi/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Espoo)
France

ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Nancy)

ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.info.univ-angers.fr/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Angers)

ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake /8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Paris)

ftp://ftp.u-strasbg.fr/pub/linux/distributions/man drake/8.2/i586/ (Strasbourg)

ftp://linux.ups-tlse.fr/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Toulouse)
Germany

ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Esslingen)

ftp://ftp.de.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.fh-giessen.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Giessen)

ftp://ftp.fh-wolfenbuettel.de/pub/os/linux/mandrak e/dist/8.2/i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Goettingen)

ftp://ftp.join.uni-muenster.de/pub/linux/distribut ions/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Muenster)

ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/unix/linux/Mandrake/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Munchen)

ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Chemnitz)

ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Clausthal)

ftp://ftp.uasw.edu/pub/os/linux/mandrake/dist/8.2/ i586/ (Wolfenbuettel)

ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (bayreuth)

ftp://ftp.uni-kassel.de/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (Kassel)

ftp://ftp.uni-mannheim.de/systems/linux/mandrake/8 .2/i586/ (Mannheim)

ftp://ftp.vat.tu-dresden.de/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

ftp://ramses.wh2.tu-dresden.de/pub/mirrors/mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Dresden)

ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/ mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Aachen)
Greece

ftp://ftp.duth.gr/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Thrace)

ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Athens)
Hong Kong

ftp://ftp.wisr.eie.polyu.edu.hk/linux/mandrake/8.2 /i586/
Hungary

ftp://ftp.linuxforum.hu/mirror/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Ireland

ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Italy

ftp://bo.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Bologna)

ftp://ftp.edisontel.it/pub/Mandrake_Mirror/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/
Latvia

ftp://ftp.latnet.lv/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Netherlands

ftp://ftp.nl.uu.net/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Man drake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/M andrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.wau.nl/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Wageningen)
Poland

ftp://ftp.ps.pl/mirrors/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Szczecin)

ftp://ftp.task.gda.pl/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Gdansk)
Portugal

ftp://ftp.dei.uc.pt/pub/linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8. 2/i586/ (Coimbra)

ftp://tux.cprm.net/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/
Russia

ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Chernogolovka)
Singapore

ftp://ftp.singnet.com.sg/opensource/linux/Mandrake /8.2/i586/
Slovakia

ftp://spirit.profinet.sk/mirrors/Mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Bratislava)
Spain

ftp://ftp.cesga.es/pub/linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Galicia)

ftp://ftp.cica.es/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Sevilla)

ftp://ftp.rediris.es/pub/linux/distributions/mandr ake/8.2/i586/
Sweden

ftp://ftp.chello.se/pub/Linux/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://ftp.chl.chalmers.se/pub/Linux/distributions/ Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Gothenburg)

ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Dalarma)
Switzerland

ftp://ftp.pcds.ch/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Neuhausen)

ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Zurich)
Taiwan

ftp://linux.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/pub/Mandrake/mandrak e/8.2/i586/

ftp://linux.csie.nctu.edu.tw/distributions/mandrak e/Mandrake/8.2/i586/

ftp://mdk.linux.org.tw/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/
Turkey

ftp://ftp.ankara.edu.tr/pub/linux/dagitimlar/Mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (Ankara)
United Kingdom

ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Canterbury)
United States

ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Georgia)

ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Florida)

ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/Mandrake/mandr ake/8.2/i586/ (NY)

ftp://ftp.nmt.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Mexico)

ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Oregon)

ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/distributions/mandrake/8.2/i 586/ (Virginia)

ftp://ftp.umr.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrake/8.2/ i586/ (Missouri)

ftp://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/linux/mandrake/8.2/i586 / (Indiana)

ftp://linux-cs.tccw.wku.edu/pub/linux/distribution s/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (WKU-Linux, Western Kentucky University)

ftp://mirror.aca.oakland.edu/linux/mandrake/8.2/i5 86/ (Michigan)

ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/Mandrak e/8.2/i586/ (Wisconsin)

ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Illinois)

ftp://mirrors.ptd.net/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (Pensylvania)

ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/

ftp://uml-pub.ists.dartmouth.edu/mirrors/ftp.mandr akesoft.com/pub/Mandrake/mandrake/8.2/i586/ (New Hampshire)

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/mandrake/Mandra ke/8.2/i586/ (Hawaii)

http://mandrake.dsi.internet2.edu/Mandrake/8.2/i58 6/ (For Internet2 academic institutions only)

mirrors by country... by neo8750 · 2002-07-22 16:21 · Score: 4, Informative · on Mozilla 1.1 Beta Out And About

lets be nice to the main site! .at

.au

.be

ftp://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mozilla/

.bg

ftp://ftp.ntrl.net/pub/mirror/mozilla/

.ca

ftp://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/Mirror/mozilla/

.ch

ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/mozilla/

.com/.net/.org/.edu

.cz

.de

.dk

.ee

ftp://ftp2.mbp.ee/pub/mozilla/

.es

.fi

ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.mozilla.org/pub /

.fr

.gr

ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/www/Mozilla/ ftp://ftp.duth.gr/pub/mozilla -->

.hk

.hu

.ie

ftp://ftp.EUnet.ie/mirrors/ftp.mozilla.org/pub/

.il

http://mozilla.fresh.co.il/

.jp

.kr

.no

ftp://ftp.uninett.no/pub/network/www/mozilla/

.pl

.pt

ftp://ftp.global-one.pt/pub/Packages/Mozilla/

.ru

ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/WWW/mozilla/

.se

.sg

.sk

http://www.mozilla.sk/pub/

.tw

ftp://ftp2.sinica.edu.tw/pub3/www/mozilla/
ftp://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/WWW/mozilla/
rsync://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/ftp/WWW/mozilla

.uk

Re:For news, cafeaulait and cafeconleche by patrickoehlinger · 2002-07-19 15:08 · Score: 1 · on Best Websites for Developers?

The site is down, but this is there mirror in Germany.

Re:If you don't like all them extra keys..... by mali · 2002-07-03 22:01 · Score: 1 · on A Selective History Of The Keyboard

Why not replace the windows keys with linux keys:

http://io.ram.rwth-aachen.de/g80-tux.jpg

(yes, its not QWERTY ;-))

I dont think my university ... by Anonymous Coward · 2002-06-20 23:56 · Score: 0 · on Inside The World's Most Advanced Computer

I dont think my university RWTH-Aachen (not to mention other German universities) is ever going to make it into the list of top 500 super computers.

Altough the setup is quite cool I guess you've never heard of it before.
It is a Sun Fire Ultra Spac Cluster.
Consisting of 16 Sun Fire 6800 SMP nodes (1500 MHz, each containing 24 processors, with 24 GB shared main memory per node) and 4 Sun Fire 15K SMP nodes (1500 MHz, 72 processors and 144 GB of memain memory each) it's arithmetic performace is to be about 4GFlop/s. Total memory 960GByte

Too bad the whole thing only going to be assembled completly in spring of 2003.

I must check wether Moore had a law on the entry level of GFlop/s for that darn list or not.
Maybe we still get a chance.

At least now the world knows that we do cool things too ;-o

I dont think my university ... by Anonymous Coward · 2002-06-20 23:56 · Score: 0 · on Inside The World's Most Advanced Computer

I dont think my university RWTH-Aachen (not to mention other German universities) is ever going to make it into the list of top 500 super computers.

Altough the setup is quite cool I guess you've never heard of it before.
It is a Sun Fire Ultra Spac Cluster.
Consisting of 16 Sun Fire 6800 SMP nodes (1500 MHz, each containing 24 processors, with 24 GB shared main memory per node) and 4 Sun Fire 15K SMP nodes (1500 MHz, 72 processors and 144 GB of memain memory each) it's arithmetic performace is to be about 4GFlop/s. Total memory 960GByte

Too bad the whole thing only going to be assembled completly in spring of 2003.

I must check wether Moore had a law on the entry level of GFlop/s for that darn list or not.
Maybe we still get a chance.

At least now the world knows that we do cool things too ;-o

Uh ... no german university in the top500 ... by Anonymous Coward · 2002-06-20 19:11 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Inside The World's Most Advanced Computer

Oh well, looks like my university is never going to make it into the top500 list of super computers (not to speak of any other german university).
Although they are setting up a quite cool Sun Fire Ultra Sparc Cluster running Solaris.

The setup will consist of 16 Sun Fire 6800 SMP nodes (1500 MHz, each node is a 24 processor SMP system with 24 GB shared main memory) and 4 Sun Fire 15K SMP nodes (1500 MHz, each having 72 processors and 144 GB of memain memory) giving an max. arithmetic performance of 4 TFlop/s.
Check the link to see for yourself (like you dont have anything better to do, right?).

Sad/funny part of the story: the cluster is going to be finished in 2003 ...
I should check Moores law on top 500 super computers...

Alt least know the world knows we do cool stuff too ...

Re:Get yer mirrors right here by bconway · 2002-05-01 02:06 · Score: 2 · on OpenOffice.org Team Releases Version 1.0

Awesome. For the record, it appears both http://openoffice.e4a.it/1.0.0/ and ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/packag es/OpenOffice/1.0.0/ have it. I pulled it off the former at a decent speed.

Get yer mirrors right here by jdfox · 2002-05-01 01:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on OpenOffice.org Team Releases Version 1.0

Courtesy of good ol' Google:

Sunsite.dk HTTP, Denmark -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Qkaka HTTP, China P.R. -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Utwente HTTP/FTP, Netherlands -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Planet Mirror HTTP, Australia -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
VLSM HTTP/FTP, Indonesia -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
E4A HTTP, Italy -
English and italian binaries.
Edumail HTTP, Belgium -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Giganet HTTP, Hungary -
Mirror with sources, binaries.
GD TU Wien HTTP/FTP, Austria -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Stud FHT-Esslingen FTP, Germany -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
3Way FTP, Hong Kong, China P.R. -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
RWTH-Aachen FTP, Germany -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files (german, french, english).
PWR Wroc FTP, Poland -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Sunsite Cnlab-Switch FTP, Switzerland -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files (german, french, english).
CHG FTP, Russia -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Mirror AC HTTP, United Kingdom -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Unam FTP, Mexico -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Stardiv FTP, Germany -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files (german, french, english).

Thanks OpenOffice team!

Sign language by Ozan · 2002-03-28 09:32 · Score: 2 · on Talk ... Without Speaking

Another way to help speechless persons to communicate is the recognition and translation of sign language. If you're interested in that you might want to look here.

Re:Close to a complete Netscape replacement? Nope by Bedouin+X · 2002-02-17 16:43 · Score: 1 · on Mozilla Development Roadmap Updated

NS 4.x touted a different kind of roaming profile than you're talking about. This may help though.

Re:Depends on the equipment by funky+womble · 2001-11-17 03:43 · Score: 1 · on 802.11g Approved By IEEE 54 mb/s on 2.4 gigahertz

Most equipment that uses Spread Spectrum Modulation will detect if any portion of the frequeny is used and hop up a bit to compensate.

Not for the current spread spectrum equipment..

Frequency hopping systems would be changing frequency anyway, not because they detect noise.

Direct sequence systems wouldn't change frequency automatically.

So, OFDM is about the nearest to your comment - it uses multiple carriers anyway, so I guess if data is not received correctly it could be retransmitted over a different carrier. Probably something like the old PEP modems.

Here is a diagram showing how OFDM transmits. (Note that in Europe we are already using OFDM commercially quite successfully for digital terrestrial television and radio - assuming that a guard period is used, it is very good at getting around multipath interference).

Re:E-Mail is not 30 years old today. by dgroskind · 2001-10-02 11:26 · Score: 2 · on Happy Birthday! Email Is 30 Years Old

Englebart was no doubt years ahead of his time but email as we know it is traced back to Tomlinson.

As the article about Ray Tomlinson says:
Like a number of then existing electronic message programs, the oldest dating from the early 1960s, SNDMSG only worked locally; it was designed to allow the exchange of messages between users who shared the same machine. Such users could create a text file and deliver it to a designated "mail box."

Tomlinson's achievement seems to have been "transferring files among linked computers at remote sites within ARPANET", that is creating users' mail boxes accessable over ARPNET, which did not exist as such before 1968.

As Englebart describes the system: "Each individual has private file space, and the group has community space, on a high-speed disc with a capacity of 96 million characters." The system therefore doesn't appear to be the network environment that Tomlinson was working in.

Englebart's list of Pioneering Firsts is said to include "integrated hypermedia email" but the term email may be an anachronism in this context.

Re:as a musician I think this is ridiculous by Troy2000 · 2001-09-08 21:33 · Score: 2, Insightful · on A Critique of the EFF's Open Audio License

Just becuase your "art" is useless and mine is functional does not make us any different.

Having gone through 6 years of intense programming, and followed it with 3 years of intense music production, I'm in a somewhat unique position to comment on the above paragraph.

I agree that programming and music are both art. However, I take serious offense to your comment about music being a "useless" art.

Are you ready to read?

I can't write a song that will add any two numbers. I can't write a song that enables the listener to run through corridors and chase other listeners down with rocket launchers.

I can, however, write a song that helps give a person insight into their relationships with other people. I can write a song that makes someone laugh, or smile.

At this point, it still might not be so obvious to you that music is important. Why do you think people bother to make music, anyway? Lets look to one of my biggest musical inspirations. Bjork, in a recent interview, talked a little bit about why she began producing solo CD's (at the age of 26 or 27 - she's 35 now). You can watch the entire interview here: damnit, the site couldn't handle the traffic but just in case someone comes through with a mirror, check out http://63.67.107.43/bjork/. I'll have to paraphrase: She explained that very often a book, a song, a movie, or a story, would be exactly what she needed to feel better about something that was bothering her. Something of a magical cure, I guess? She looked at the names of people on CD's and books, and realized how much they had sacrificed just to create their works and have them distributed. All that work just to make her feel better. She set out on a mission to do the same for others, and 4 CD's later she's far along that path.

I look back on my obsession with programming, and its quite clear to me why I devoted so much time to it - its a perfect creative outlet and a very effective escape from reality. When you're 72 consecutive hours into a coding binge, you're in a different world. The unpredictability of social situations are at a safe distance. You don't think about things like your appearance, your odor, whether or not people like you, whats happening in asian sweatshops, or what sort of evil is being planned in those 12 levels of management above you. You are in control of the world - there's you, your keyboard, mouse, data structures, control statements, functions, registers, libraries, memory, a video card, a sound card, some speakers, and a monitor. There is nothing else. (And people wonder why ego-centrism is a characteristic commen to so many coders, heh)

I got a job in the industry, and quickly learned that when someone is paying you to code, your creative options are a bit more limited. Unless you're the lead programmer, the best you can hope to do is come up with a creative way to solve whatever problem is being put in front of you. For me, this amount of creative control wasn't enough. It wasn't fun. Programming, which had been my ultimate creative outlet, was now just a chore. Sure I was making money and could pay my rent, but I lived at the office. Whats more, I worked at a computer all day on things related to my job - the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was spend more time at the keyboard working - even if it was on personal projects. There's only so much time one can spend sitting at one of these things. I was no longer able to enjoy programming as I once had, so I returned to college and got back on my parents payroll. (A side note, overaggressive intellectual property clauses in employee contracts make outside-the-job coding projects even more difficult.)

When you throw something like an intense addiction to programming into the garbage can, there is no escape from reality. You've got to fucking figure it out. This is when books, paintings, music, and other traditional art forms came into my life. They helped! I was trying to deal with the fact that some girl wasn't calling me back or (gasp) responding to my emails, and Bjork sang to me "Give her some time, give her some space", and everything was better. I was sad about something so intangible, that it took Beck's "Mutations" to turn my frown into a grin. I was so upset with everyone in America being so goddamn *motionless* - I wanted to move! So I immersed myself in the aggressive dancefloor rhythms that are collectively known as "Jungle" or "Drum and Bass". I don't suppose you understand the therapeutic value of dancing until you're dripping with sweat?

A more generic example: Some people simply feel better when they hear a beautiful voice.

My father used to play classical music for me as a child, and I would pretend to be the conductor (plastic straw in hand, flowing with the beat). I spent some time in high school (coincidentally the same time I began programming) writing music with Cakewalk 2.0 and a midi-based synth workstation (Korg X5). However, music never really stirred me deeply until after I began confronting the reality of my life, in college, on the planet earth.

The difference is that I have to go to work for hours and create art every single working day of the week. You on the other hand are only asked to create art for a few hours every so often. You have ZERO right to make money just because you think you deserve it. You have to earn it just like the rest of us.

I've come to realize that, through music, I have the ability to effect people's lives in a positive way - and in such a unique way! I enjoy it immensely, its fufilling for me as well as others, and (fuck you!) its challenging! I'm not Britney Spears - I don't work on music "every so often" - I *live* in my studio. I'm writing music just about every day - to the point where I go through withdrawal when I'm on vacations (like this weekend, for instance).

Schlockmeisters in LA and New York can cookie-cut and sell over a million pop album's in a matter of months - but that music is fast food garbage. Its filler. Its an advertisement for itself. And for some strange reason, the only thing that ever seems to be gleaned from it is that the most important things in life are sex, money, and being cool. How convenient for the rest of the entertainment industry, which specializes in these products.

The real problem is, organizations like the RIAA have built up the notion in your (and my, and the whole world's) head that being "creative" is some magical ability that few people possess in any quantity.

In my entire life, I've met about 10 other people who take music as seriously as I do, and who devote as much time to it as I do. I've met about 10 million other people. Being creative is not a magical ability, you are right - and it could even be argued that making music is not a magical ability. There *is* something special about everyone - but not everyone devotes themselves to music so wholeheartedly that their incomes depend on it. Those who chose to are entitled to do so, though you may believe they are not.

Nevermind that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have been artistic just fine without the need for superstardom. Today you we taught that musicians/actors/artists/etc. are so special and rare that we must pay a hefty percentage of our GDP to thier masters simply because who knows when such talent will ever been seen on this earth again, right? Well, I'm sorry to break it to you, but we are all talented, we are all artists. We can't help it.

The ones who teach "celebrity" have always been the ones selling it. Most of the "superstar musicians" you're exposed to in American pop culture aren't really musicians anyway - they're puppets. You can't blame musicians for that sick circus.

Making money off of art is like making money of of breathing. Everybody does it, no one has some "right" because they happen to have asthma. By trying to make a living off of music, you are simply perputrating the notion that music is something that is rare enough or difficult enough to make a living doing. You are contributing to the death of music and humanity's musical soul far more effectivly than any sort of "Open Music License", my friend.

As I said earlier, everyone has the right to chose their profession, so long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. Given that this is a country defined by its capitalism, none of us will be able to make any money unless we sell something. Our programming skills, maybe. Our salesmanship. Our unique ability with scissors and hair.

Both the GPL and OAL licenses are absolutely great for stimulating interest and creativity in the fields they apply to. However, neither will help pay the rent.

I do plan on releasing some music under the OAL (now that I've heard about it) and when I get back into coding, I'll probably release some code under the GPL too. I've released code before too, you know - before I really knew what the GPL was all about.

My advice to musicians? Work your fucking heart out and sell the fruits of your labor. If you end up with lots of experiments gone wrong, or just lots of doodles, or you just don't really give a shit about what happens to a particular piece of your music, don't let it sit in your vault - release it under the OAL. Someone, somewhere, will learn something from it. Just make sure you don't plan on using any samples of it in future works for sale :).

I was going to rip this article a new one, but.. by Bowie+J.+Poag · 2001-08-20 07:43 · Score: 5, Informative · on The Real History of the GUI

I was going to rip this article a new one, but i'm glad they got it right. What I would consider to be the first GUI was Sutherland's "Sketchpad" system from the early 60's. The military had similar sorts of things predating Sutherland, but nothing quite flexible enough to really be called a full blown GUI.

Anybody with their brains in the right place can tell you that the GUI was not invented by Xerox PARC. They may have done a great deal to push the idea, or perhaps simply been at the right place at the right time, but the basic idea of using graphics as a means to interact with a machine predates PARC by about 20 years.

If you really wanna have some fun, check out Doug Englebart's 1968 presentation that introduced the world to the mouse, chordboard and other interesting stuff. There are plenty of links to it, but here's a good one incase you cant find any. A while back, there was a site that offered his entire presentation in RealVideo format, IIRC..I wish someone would post a link to it, or perhaps a better (re: DivX, or straight MPEG) link... It almost brings tears to my eyes when I watch it. :)

Makes you envious... by vs · 2001-08-15 03:07 · Score: 1 · on A Motley Crew Beams No-Cost Broadband In New York

Our university RWTH Aachen is currently setting up a few ACs and stuff, but they require you to contact a PPTP server in the WLAN for any outgoing connections (and even then, you can't get into the WLAN from the outside). Authentication will be implemented using the same set of accounts for dialup-networking. So if you have a visiting guest, you have to apply for a new PPTP account some time before.

You can't even contact a PPTP server outside the WLAN...All in the name of accountability.

Ah, and of course the plans for hardwiring the NIC's MAC-addresses hasn't been completely canceled yet, IIRC.

I don't think that many open networks will exist in the long term (except mis-configured ones).

Rational Programming vs Semantic Web by Baldrson · 2001-04-10 16:58 · Score: 4 · on Berners-Lee On The Semantic Web

As I posted to Slashdot a year ago on the topic:

The future of the Internet is in what I call "rational programming" derived from a revival of Bertrand Russell's Relation Arithmetic. Rational programming is a classically applicable branch of relation arithmetic's sub theory of quantum software (as opposed to the hardware-oriented technology of quantum computing). By classically applicable I mean it is applies to conventional computing systems -- not just quantum information systems. Rational programming will subsume what Tim Berners Lee calls the semantic web. The basic problem Tim (and just about everyone back through Bertrand Russell) fails to perceive is that logic is irrational. John McCarthy's signature line says it all about this kind of approach: "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense." More on this a bit later, but first some history, because he who fails to learn from history is doomed to repeat its nonsense:

When I invented the precursor to Postscript (an audacious claim that I can back up -- it started as a replacement for NAPLPS which I proposed while Manager of Interactive Architectures for Viewdata Corp of America back in November of 1981 -- the Xerox PARC guys found my approach of what they called a "tokenized Forth" communication protocol to be an intriguing way to encode text and graphics), I was interested in having a Forth virtual machine migrate into silicon (ala Novix) so it could evolve from mere graphics rendering into a distributed Smalltalk VM environment (ala Squeak) as videotex terminal/personal computer capacities increased. But I was _not_ interested in object-oriented programming as the long-term semantics of distributed programming environments. (I still have some of the hardcopy of the communiques with Xerox PARC and others from this period.)

Rather, relational semantics were what I saw as the ultimate direction for distributed programming. I had a bit of a go at Tony Hoare's "communicating sequential processes" paradigm and its Transputer realization because he was, at least, starting with the hard problem of parallelism rather than making like the drunk looking for his keys under the light post the way everyone else seemed to be doing (and still are, save for Mozart, since threads, etc. are always an afterthought). But, because there were other hard problems like abstraction, transactions and persistence that he ignored, I christened his approach "Occam's Chainsaw Massacre" in my communiques (in honor of his distributed programming language "Occam") and dropped it in favor of relational programming, which has inherent parallelism resulting from both dependency and indeterminacy. (BTW: Dr. Hoare seems to have finally come to his senses about this issue.)

Unfortunately, the only researcher doing hardcore work on relational programming (meaning, getting to the root of relational semantics in a way that Codd had failed to do) at the time was Bruce MacLennan, then, of The Naval Postgraduate School, and he just didn't have the glamour of Alan Kay at places like Xerox PARC to attract the attention of guys like Steve Jobs. Bruce had a bit of a blind-spot, too, when it came to transactions and persistence, which I attempted to remedy by bringing David P. Reed's work on distributed transactions for the ARPAnet to him, but although he wrote a white paper on a predicate calculus (close to a relational) implementation of Reed's thesis (MIT/LCS/TR-205), he didn't really "get it", IMHO. Reed and MacLennan abandoned their work for other pursuits (ironically, Reed was chief scientist at Lotus while Notes was being developed but did not contribute his ideas on distributed synchronization to that development despite the fact that we had a mutual acquaintance from my Plato days by the name of Ray Ozzie -- so, I share some of the blame for this failure) even as Steve Jobs botched the embryonic object oriented world by abandoning Smalltalk and giving us, instead, a lineage consisting of Object Pascal on the Lisa/Mac which begat Objective C on Jobs's NeXT which begat Java at Sun via Naughton and Gosling's experience with NeXT.

This brings us to the present -- a world in which Javascript-based technologies like Tibet promise to not only salvage the object oriented aspect of the Internet from the birth defects of Jobs's spawn, but actually provide an advance over Smalltalk in the same lineage as CLOS and Self. But it is also a world in which there is growing confusion over the proper role of "metadata" in the form of XML -- particularly when it comes to speech acts and distributed inference. I would call Tibet "the next major Internet advance" except for the fact that the basic idea for a Tibet-like system has been around and well understood since the early 1980's. When it is finally released, Tibet (or a system like it) will put the Internet back on track. I call that a "recovery", not an "advance".

We are now poised to move forward with type inference based on full blown inference engines, thereby dispensing with the nonterminating arguments over statically vs dynamically typed languages that allowed Steve Jobs's spawn to get its nose in the tent. If you want to declare a "type" in a declarative language, just make another declaration and let the inference engine figure out what it can do with that information prior to run time. See how easy that was? Well, there is more to it than that, but not that much: Assertions have implications and assertions made prior to run time have implications prior to run time. Live with it and don't repeat the mistakes of the past.

The confusion over semantic webs, and the reason Berners Lee et al will fail, is essentially the same as the confusion that has beleaguered all inferential systems such as logic programming and "artificial intelligence" over the years: logic is irrational and the real world demands rationality -- otherwise nothing makes sense. By "rationality" I mean that reasoning must literally incorporate "ratios" -- or, as John McCarthy would put it, doing arithmetic so things make sense. By making sense, I mean there is a sense in which one interprets the sea of assertions that clearly dominates for a particular purpose. With logic not only are you limited to 0 and 1 as effective quantities; you have no adequate theoretic basis from which to derive more accurate quantities with which to make sense by taking ratios and determining which inferences are dominant.

Fuzzy logic and expert systems incorporating probabilities have typically failed because they are not based in the first principles of probability and statistics. As Gauss, the premiere probability theorist put it, "Mathematics is the study of relations." He didn't say, "Mathematics is the study of multisets." There are good reasons that relational databases, and not set manipulation languages, have come to dominate business applications -- and Gauss was aware of these differences when he began to derive his laws of probability. Subsequent axiomatizations of mathematics based on set theory were similarly misguided and have led to the idea that "fuzzy sets" are the way to introduce rationality into programming. Rather than sets, relations are the foundation, not just of mathematics but of rationality in the same sense that Gauss realized when he derived his theory of probability from the study of relations.

Rationality allows for judgment which is recognized as inherently fallible -- but which allows one to procede without exponentiating all possible paths of inference. Judgment also allows various identities to limit sharing of information to that needed -- thereby creating speech acts and a basis for rational measures of credibility associated with those identities. Since credit-rating is a degeneration of credibility, it should come as no shock that the invention of negative numbers, originating as they did with the Arabic invention of double entry account keeping, has its analog in something that might be called "logical debt" with which negative probabilities are associated.

And now we have come to the "quantum" aspect of rational programming. It is precisely the "credibility debt" aspect of rational programming that corresponds, in mathematical detail, to the various equations of quantum mechanics and their negative probability amplitudes. (Von Neumann's quantum logic failed to properly incorporate logical debt which has led to much confusion.) Logical debt is important to distributed programming for the same reason debt is important to financial networks. Logical debt is a way of handling poor synchronization of information flow in the same way that financial debt is a way of handling poor synchronization of cash flow. As in any rational system, there are both limits to credit and limits to credibilty that influence one's judgments and actions, including speech acts.

The object oriented folks may, in a sense, have the last laugh here because when we divide up inference into identities that engage in speech acts, we are reintroducing the notion of objects that hide information via exchange of speech act messages that can be thought of as "setters" (assertions) and "getters" (queries). However, I believe it is only fair to recognize that the excellent intuitions of Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard did need the added insights and rigor of philosophers like J. L. Austin and T. Etter.

that's old stuff by Anonymous Coward · 2000-08-20 15:47 · Score: 3 · on Fiberless Optical Networks

Hi, just want to tell you that this laser thing really is old. Here at Aachen (in the very western part of Germany) the student hostels "Die Türme" (the towers, called so for being the four heightest buildings here in Aachen) of the technical university RWTH use such a laser to connect their local network via the laser with the main computer facililty of the RWTH and the web. The laser is about 4 years old and has a max. bandwith of 40Mbit. And yes, fog and heavy rain is a problem. Have a look at: http://www.oph.rwth-aachen.de/ag/netzwerk/technik/ laser.html for the technical data and here, you'll get a picture: http://www.oph.rwth-aachen.de/ag/netzwerk/technik/ laser.bilder.html (No, that's not me on the picture) . Sorry, all pages are in german.

that's old stuff by Anonymous Coward · 2000-08-20 15:47 · Score: 3 · on Fiberless Optical Networks

Hi, just want to tell you that this laser thing really is old. Here at Aachen (in the very western part of Germany) the student hostels "Die Türme" (the towers, called so for being the four heightest buildings here in Aachen) of the technical university RWTH use such a laser to connect their local network via the laser with the main computer facililty of the RWTH and the web. The laser is about 4 years old and has a max. bandwith of 40Mbit. And yes, fog and heavy rain is a problem. Have a look at: http://www.oph.rwth-aachen.de/ag/netzwerk/technik/ laser.html for the technical data and here, you'll get a picture: http://www.oph.rwth-aachen.de/ag/netzwerk/technik/ laser.bilder.html (No, that's not me on the picture) . Sorry, all pages are in german.

Rational Programming is Not an Oxymoron by Baldrson · 2000-05-27 21:57 · Score: 2 · on What Will The Internet Of The Future Be Like?